Essay
Equal in Worth, Different by Design
Youth and young adulthood brings important questions about dating, marriage, and family life.
Who should I date? What should I look for in a future husband or wife? Does equality mean that women and men should be the same? If women and men are equal before God, why do their differences matter?
The restored gospel of Jesus Christ teaches that women and men have equal divine worth, but equality does not require them to be identical. You are a beloved son or daughter of Heavenly Parents, and being male or female is part of your eternal identity and purpose.
God created women and men to share the blessings of salvation through Jesus Christ. In marriage, He designed them to unite different strengths and responsibilities as equal partners in building a family.
God’s Pattern for Women and Men
The pattern begins with the Creation.
After Adam was placed in the Garden of Eden, God declared, “It is not good that the man should be alone” (Genesis 2:18).
Eve was then created as Adam’s equal partner. Together they entered the marriage covenant and began the human family.
The Family: A Proclamation to the World teaches that fathers and mothers have divinely appointed responsibilities and are to help one another “as equal partners.”
These teachings establish an important balance. God does not give one sex greater eternal worth than the other. But He also does not define equality as sameness. His pattern brings difference and equality together in a covenant relationship where women and men strengthen and support one another.
Compatibility Is Not the Same as Complementarity
This idea can be useful when you are dating.
Arthur Brooks, a New York Times best-selling author and neuroscientist, makes a helpful distinction between compatibility and complementarity in this Instagram clip about dating and choosing a spouse.
Shared faith, character, values, and hopes for marriage and family matter enormously. But a good marriage does not require two people to approach everything in exactly the same way.
A useful dating question is not only, “Do I enjoy being with this person?” It is also:
Could we build a covenant life together?
Can you respect each other’s differences? Can you counsel together, repent, forgive, sacrifice, and allow another person’s strengths to expand your own?
Elder Bednar: Women and Men Complement One Another
The restored gospel takes the idea of complementarity deeper.
Elder David A. Bednar taught in “Marriage Is Essential to His Eternal Plan” that the differences between women and men belong within Heavenly Father’s plan of happiness. Women and men bring distinctive capacities, perspectives, and experiences into marriage. They contribute differently but equally to the unity God designed them to build together.
This does not mean that every woman or every man must have the same personality or fit a rigid list of traits. Individual women and men differ enormously.
The doctrine is larger than personality. Male and female are eternally meaningful, and God designed marriage so that a woman and man can learn from, strengthen, and bless one another.
When Equality Begins to Mean Sameness
It is easy to understand why some modern messages about gender are appealing.
Women have sometimes been treated unfairly. Men have sometimes abused authority. Cultural expectations have sometimes been presented as though they were eternal doctrine. Wanting women and men to be treated with equal dignity and respect is good.
The problem comes when equality begins to mean that meaningful differences between women and men must be unimportant.
If you hear that message often enough, gender can begin to seem arbitrary, dependence on another person can look like weakness, and different responsibilities can automatically feel like evidence of inequality.
Elder Bednar taught that Satan works to “confuse understanding about gender” and to hinder righteous marriage because gender, marriage, and family are central to Heavenly Father’s plan.
That deception can be especially persuasive when it attaches itself to a legitimate concern about fairness. The gospel does not require us to reject equality. It gives equality a deeper foundation: women and men have equal divine worth while also having an eternal identity and purpose that God did not intend us to erase.
What Research Shows
Researchers use the term “dyadic coping” to describe how couples handle problems as a team. This might include talking about stress, supporting each other, sharing responsibilities, and working through challenges together rather than leaving one person to carry everything alone.
One large study that examined 72 research projects involving more than 17,000 people found that couples who handled stress together tended to be happier in their relationships.
This research does not explain gospel doctrine or prove why God created women and men with differences. It does show something important: marriages are stronger when two people communicate well, support each other, and treat life’s challenges as shared responsibilities.
In everyday terms, a strong marriage is not about keeping score. It grows when two people learn to face life together and help carry each other’s burdens.
Something to Think About
- Who or what has been shaping the way I think about the differences between women and men?
- Have I begun to assume that equality requires women and men to be essentially the same?
- When I think about dating, am I looking only for similarity, or also for shared values and complementary strengths?